After 55 years, pen pals meet

South Bend resident travels to South Dakota.

South Bend resident travels to South Dakota.

September 05, 2008|GENE STOWE Tribune Correspondent

Friends with the write stuff for 55 years finally met this summer, as Eileen Balmer and her husband, Reynolds, made a trip west and connected with Arlene Robinson, of South Dakota, Eileen's regular pen pal since eighth grade. They were 13-year-old girls when Eileen noticed Arlene's name in a newspaper article about pen pals and struck up the correspondence that has averaged every other month since the Eisenhower administration. "That's a long time, isn't it?" Eileen marvels. "When we lived on the farm in (Columbus Grove) Ohio, my dad got a farm paper in the mail. In that was a little column of pen pals you could write." Eileen learned that Arlene, like herself, enjoyed cooking. "We're close in age. I wrote to her, and she wrote back to me," Eileen says. "We have been writing ever since." When they started, Arlene lived in Veblen, S.D. Now she lives in Keystone, S.D., where she works for a historical museum. "We moved several times," but always made sure to send the new address, Eileen says, adding that they would sometimes send pictures or share phone calls, but mostly it's pen to paper. Arlene doesn't have a computer, sparing them the distraction of e-mail or instant messaging. Although some letters have carried news of gripping tragedy -- Arlene's first husband, a firefighter in Rapid City, S.D., died saving people during a flood -- most messages have been routine: "our marriages and our children and our grandchildren," Eileen says. "It's just been ordinary events in our lives," she says. "It was a little bit of everything. We just visited through the mail -- just like you would talk to a friend. "A stamp for 42 cents is not a lot when you think of it going that far. "Good friendships are made through the mail. Neither of us was sure we'd ever meet." In July, Reynolds' hankering to see the West converged with Eileen's desire to meet her longtime pen pal, so they traveled to South Dakota, where it turned out that Arlene lived just around the corner from their hotel in Keystone. "I called her and said 'We're here,'" Eileen says. "We walked to meet each other. It was quite exciting. We just kind of laughed. We didn't know what to say. She fixed some good meals for us. She took a day off work so we could see the sights. "We're a lot alike, we found out. We have the same family values, church attendance." Arlene has four children. Eileen has two sons. They both drive Buick Century cars and even have the same style of telephone. The Balmers, who live on the south side of South Bend, also visited the Badlands, the Corn Palace in Mitchell, the Needle Highway rock formation and the famous general merchandise store Wall Drug, all in South Dakota, as well as Devils Tower and some ranches in Wyoming. Maybe they'll meet again. Maybe not. But the in-person moments already enrich the long tradition of their faithful correspondence. "We always look forward to each other's letters," Eileen says. "Now that we've met, I'll look for them even more."